


Fire Breather

by Minka



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Circus, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Artist Steve Rogers, BAMF Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, First Meetings, I'm annoyed there's no 'meet-ugly' tag, M/M, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Sort Of, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Steve's a little creepy but it's ok, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, circus performer Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 06:46:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19847746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minka/pseuds/Minka
Summary: The third time Steve saw him was no accident.Neither was the fourth, nor the fifth.There was a turning point in every situation in life.  That tip on the scale of accidental and deliberate, where something innocent could be warped and twisted into something premeditated and intentional.Steve passed that point last Thursday.***Aka, the borderline creepy Soulmate AU where Steve is an artist and Bucky is a mysterious circus performer.





	Fire Breather

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as an exercise in freeform writing because I was whining about being blocked and achieving nothing. There was no plan, no plot. No pairing or fandom. No nothing. Just me, a glass (bottle) of wine and the song Adored by LAUREL. 
> 
> This is the result. Certainly not my best work, but hey. It’s something! And marks my first Stucky fic, so yay! 
> 
> On the topic of music. LAUREL’s Adored started it, her song Fire Breather really sealed the deal, and later (you’ll know when) Bucky’s theme song is oddly Cali God by Grace Mitchell. Not really for the lyrics, but that dark, sexy, dangerous beat. Seriously. You’ll know when it’s meant to kick in (like a movie soundtrack) so just bask in the greatness.

_You've been wasting my time, honey_  
_I've been wasting your life, baby_  
_We can sit and talk_  
_And I'll pretend that I give a fuck_

_When it's all dead and cold  
We'll sit and stare, while we turn each other off_

* * *

The first time Steve saw him, Steve was on a date. 

It wasn’t exactly the best courting practice; sitting across the table from a girl while subtly checking out the guy behind her, but Steve had never claimed to be an angel. Polite, yes; chivalrous, of course, but he wasn’t a saint. Especially not when someone like _him_ stopped in clear view. 

Lovely as Steve’s date was with her honey-coloured hair and glossy lips, she tended to drop ‘like’ in the middle of sentences. Given how many of those sentences revolved around her social media, it was hard for Steve to tell if she was saying _like_ as in like, or like as in _like_.

The more he thought about it, the more his head hurt. 

She wasn’t his soulmate, that was for sure. Hell, he’d known that before they’d even gone on this date. She had too. 

They said that everyone had a soulmate. A perfect person, not necessarily in every sense of the word, but perfect for someone else. Ying and yang. Two parts of a whole. Complimentary thoughts and personalities and endless days of perfect companionship. Epic pairs of starstruck people breathing air that seemed better once they’d found ‘The One’. 

Steve had friends who’d found theirs, their words matching up and sparking a love like Steve had never seen. He also knew people he considered horrible blights on society who had happily found their mates, souls who were just as ugly as each other. Perfect for each other because no one else could stand them. 

Perfect, perfect, _perfect_. 

It was a real, tangible part of life. Something beautiful to look forward to, and something that cut like a blade, the longer you were alone. 

And then there were people like Steve. Those who craved and wanted that earth-shattering, world-ending and big bang creating love, but who couldn’t seem to find it. 

He wasn’t alone. Mutual loneliness was a strange thing, especially in a world made for and created by lovers. There were movements! Some good and hopeful and while others were nasty and bitter. Collections of people like him, support groups and social networks dedicated to helping those still alone to find _The One, or those_ who were sick of being single to find _someone_. People who could see past the blind need to find their other half and would be happy settling down with someone not necessarily perfect, but someone real. Someone to love. To share moments with, to smile at of a morning and grumble at after a long day. 

Contentment. Commitment. 

After all, romantic as Soulmates were, Steve wasn’t sure how he felt about the words on his arm. 

_“She said you’re a fuckin’ creeper.”_

It didn’t sound like a good thing to hear, not from anyone, let alone his Soulmate. Steve didn’t want to be creepy. Didn’t want to be that guy making some woman uncomfortable enough to spark someone else standing up to him. It was horrible! 

He’d felt that way since he was ten when the words had first appeared. While he was too young to understand, he now knew that his mother had felt the same. She’s covered his arms with long sleeves and jackets, and when Steve had been old enough to make his own decisions, he’d hidden them away behind wrist braces and burn wraps. 

He’d rather be perceived as scarred and imperfect than _a fuckin’ creeper_.

They weren’t even pleasant to look at. Some people had beautiful looping scripts, fonts that were so lovely that they looked like Edwardian handwriting. Others had words in colour, splashes of highlighted emotion and watercolour, bringing them to life across their skin. 

Steve’s words were black and slanted. Harsh looking. They sat at that gaudy borderline of English script made to look like a foreign alphabet. Like a Chinese menu, only more Cyrillic and looking like someone had carved the words into a tree with a knife, jolted and rough and angry. 

They were as ugly as the implication behind them. 

And so Steve had started dating. Maybe there’d be someone out there who wouldn’t mind him. Who wouldn’t care about the disgusting connotation of his words, and would be content to just be with him. 

The woman across from him liked to wear bracelets like they could cover the words on her arm. While they were smaller than Steve’s and written across her wrist, a keen eye could still pick them out when looking. And Steve had been looking. 

As far as words went, _You’re a goddamn train wreck_ , was right up there with Steve’s’. 

Sure, his date didn’t seem like the brightest bulb in the box, nor the most interesting – at least to Steve – but he wouldn’t call her a train wreck. She seemed to have a thriving Social Media business and could walk through doors without crashing into them or tripping over. She was together and well presented in that overly shiny, expensive makeup sort of way. And she did have a good sense of style and appreciation of colour which appealed to the artist in Steve. 

That was why Steve was glancing around the Milk Bar in the first place. He wasn’t trying to be rude. If anything, Steve was encouraging her by looking at the wall she’d indicated. She had asked him if he thought the colour of the paint would clash with her outfit because it was the perfect tone for her feed. 

Steve didn’t know much about social media, but he knew the aesthetic. Neon signs and green leaves popping over bright colours. Or muted pinks and golds and fluffy things. What once was trashed as being modern hipster was now all the craze. Sleek designs that hinted at a retro that never existed. Milk Shoppes and throwback Rockabilly diners and furry walls. 

And so that was how Steve saw him. 

Tall and dark and standing at the counter, his hip resting casually against the side of the ocean-blue wood. 

He was pointing at something on the menu with his head tilted to the side. 

Steve had seen that pose before. Either the guy didn’t understand the hipster slang of the menu, or he was foreign and struggling with everything. 

The cashier, for her part, didn’t look too off-put, but she also looked like she could use a bucket and possibly a bib. She had that far off, dreamy look of a young woman drooling over someone attractive, and it didn’t take a detective to notice the way her eyes kept glancing to the man’s left arm, clearly trying to steal a glimpse of words.

Steve didn’t care about that, didn’t even arch up at the idea of someone trying to read a Soulmark before speaking. That was manipulation and entrapment in its finest. In this case, though, he guessed it was just the enamoured attentions of a bored teenage girl being struck dumb by the presence of a likely supermodel. 

There was something about him, something that screamed mystery and thrilling danger. It had to be the outfit. Unlike Steve’s date – shit! His date; he should be paying attention! “The colour is lovely,” he said, clearly forgetting the question – the man favoured dark clothes with close seamlines. Steve’s companion was flowers and floaty sleeves, pinks that complimented her hair and tan accessories the colour of knockoff leather. 

The man though; he was real leather and black buckles, tight jeans and boots that danced the line between casual and military. 

That wasn’t to say that he was a goth kid: more, a James Dean of the modern age. The casual way his jacket hung open to give the flash of a white shirt and a gleam of what could possibly be dog tags helped create that look. Slicked back hair, manicured scruff and impossible cheekbones only heightened the style. 

The man turned, and for a moment, Steve was rewarded with a flash of eyes the colour of the ocean. No, the sky. But with more silver. Like a frozen lake reflecting that powder blue of a dusky sky after a snowstorm. 

For the briefest of moments, their eyes locked, Steve forgot how to breathe, and the world around him shuddered to a stop. Everything moved, and nothing moved; focus blurred, and Steve could feel the ground falling out from under his feet and the weight of the sky crashing down. 

The retro café whirled back into focus the moment the man looked away. Steve sucked in a breath and righted himself. No, he wasn’t falling. He was sitting. No sky was crashing down; he was in a building. 

The man took the two coffees he’d collected and handed one to a pretty redhead, his back to Steve and if Steve ogled the shape of his shoulders, then that was between himself as his conscious. His companion was the sort of woman that Steve usually liked. Petite and pretty and looking like she could break more than his nose if she wanted to. She had a pixie nose that turned up ever so slightly. It was cute. 

Steve hated the fact that they made an adorable couple and enviously watched as they walked out the door, close enough that their elbows brushed against each other.

“Steve?” A voice broke through the spell, and Steve flushed with embarrassment. The way she said his name suggested she'd been calling for his attention for a while now. She looked at him quizzically before sighing out loud and laying her palms on the table. 

“We’re terrible for each other,” she admitted casually. 

Steve laughed and called for the bill. 

He was, after all, a gentleman. 

* * *

_Wishing on the stars, wonder what you are?_

  
_I just don't know, he's beautiful_  
_Maybe he shines a little more than me_

_No, it's too much, burn my sun  
Up in flames we go you fire breather_

* * *

The second time Steve saw him was through the lens of his camera. 

Steve loved to freeze moments in time, add colour or strip it away, all while preserving the world around him. 

He was a sketcher at heart, and a messy painter, but he loved his camera as well. Photos were things he kept for himself, a reminder of the moments he’d witnessed. Steve liked to use them as a guideline for his artwork. Little snippets of life and emotions that he could shape into a tangible reality with his hands. Creation. He took that printed image, sealed in fabricated 3D and made it into something else. 

Steve’s studio was just as strung with Kodak prints as it was with canvases, scattered pencils and coffee mugs. 

But his camera? That was where a different sort of magic happened. 

Steve loved art – he breathed and survived on it – but there was a realness to photography that no painting could ever capture. The Greats could make a landscape pop with paint and impressionist strokes, and Steve made his thoughts come alive on both the page and a canvas, but nothing captured the heart and soul of a subject like a photograph. The flash of a look, the rise of steam from a street grate or shiny drop of rain caressing a leaf. 

The city only had so much to offer though, at least to Steve. If he were a real photographer – the sort that could see an image and a story anywhere – then he’d be forever entertained. He wasn’t though, and he knew that. It was a hobby that he enjoyed and an outlet that helped stoke his creativity, but photography wasn’t his life. 

The streets became dull after a while, the thrill of yet another empty road faded, and there were only so many photos he could take of interesting reflections in shop windows before he went insane. 

So when the park down near the water was overtaken by a circus, Steve knew that he had to go. It was like the good old days; roaming carnivals and prohibition and endless dust. 

Only not. This was a modern affair, town sanctioned with permits in frames at the ticket booths and smiling attendants that welcomed the guests to the fare while handing over a program printed on recycled paper. There was no kicked up dust, just manicured lawns and art installations. Chic pastel vans sold cocktails in mason jars as allowed their guests to lounge in leather beanbags and wicker egg chairs. 

It was here for a month, and Steve had meant to go for the better part of two weeks. The lights called to him at night, the glow of Edison bulbs strung through the trees and the flash of carnival rides made him breathe in deep and smile each time he passed it. Popcorn and caramel and _happiness_ hung on the air. But Steve was always in a rush, always hurrying off to the next big thing. A gallery opening here, a showing there. Dinner with a potential collector and drinks with Sam and his new – but not so new that they could survive outside of the bedroom – Soulmate, Riley. 

Finally, it was a lazy Wednesday night when Steve paid for his entrance with his camera slung effortlessly over his shoulder. 

Walking through the hijacked parkland, Steve kept his eye out for rare moments in time. Like the couple feeding each other hotdogs in the glow of a Strongman Stall. _Click_. He snapped a series of photos for later, loving the way her eyes twinkled as she looked at him, and the way dried onion clung to the man’s upper lip. 

Then there were the paddle boats that circled in the small lagoon, or the queasy looking man and his partner who staggered off a ride with too many loops. Click, click, click. 

The next thing Steve saw was the woman walking alone. Casual, with hair pulled into a messy ponytail and natural makeup that had clearly been on all day. She was heavier than society’s ideal, but tall and determined with the strap of her camera lashed around one wrist. She worked the crowd like she did this for a living. Photography. Travelling. Seeking out strangers and fascinating moments in the day and night. Chapped but glossy lips disappeared between teeth as she snapped away, seeking angles that Steve would never have imaged. 

He took her photo too, capturing her kneeling near the base of a chair, shooting up towards a canopy of lights and stars and inky darkness. 

Steve thought to speak to her. To say hello and ask if she was having a good night. To see if she’d show him her photos. Maybe they’d laugh and find common ground, travel around the carnival as a terrible two-some of guerrilla photographers. 

But what was the point? She wasn’t his Soulmate. Steve knew that from the words on his arm. If he went up and talked to her, one of two things would happen. She’d smile and tolerate him, and maybe they’d become friends. That was a good outlook to have. But if she didn’t? Steve would be bothering her, possibly being creepy, and while he knew that could open doors to finding his The One, Steve never wanted to be that person. He didn’t want to scare people, or intrude, or force his presence. 

He didn’t want to be _creepy_. 

And so he snapped his photo of her, silently wished her the best, and left without a word. 

Steve wound his way through food stalls and Sideshow Rides. He zoomed in on cotton candy and fairy lights, on play swords and the back of a child in an Iron Man costume, walking hand in hand with a woman in a pencil skirt. 

There was something so open and inviting about the carnival. Everyone was welcome, everyone was loved, and no one was left behind. 

Steve liked that, felt it resonate in his heart somewhere even as he slipped out of the light and into the shadows beyond a roped off fence. 

There was something to be said about places you shouldn’t be. Construction sites, abandoned warehouses and rundown train stations; they all called to the creator in Steve, and he was helpless to resist. Those sorts of places wanted to be seen. Wanted to be preserved and, maybe in the dark of the night, they wanted to be remade with the stroke of Steve’s brush and the colours of fog grey and soot black. Crumbling walls held together with ivy and graffiti bright in the gloom. 

The same, he guessed, could be said about the waterside carnival and the section that lay behind the lights. 

Fenced off and closed to the public, the trailers of the travelling workers were slate blue against the taffy twilight of the night, each one glowing with a speck of butterscotch yellow. A hidden village; a circle of magical wagons and colours so alive in Steve’s mind that his fingers itched to select his paints from his shelf. 

And there, in that blend of periwinkle and misty blue twilight, was where Steve saw _him_ again. 

He was leaning again – always leaning – but this time against a tree at the back of the lot. The lights of the carnival cast odd shadows that danced with the glow of his cigarette. Steve was obsessed with the way it highlighted his face and all those little dips around sharp ridges of cheekbones and cigarette-pouty lips. Mountains and valleys and plains of perfect skin. 

Steve lifted his camera and turned the focus on his lens. He held his breath and imagined what the man would look like in watercolour and acrylic. 

_Click_ , went the shutter. 

His camera screen flashed, locking the sight of the attractive man forever in an image. One that Steve could keep and call his own. 

Even to this day, some people thought that photos stole souls. It was hogwash, born of superstition at the turn of the last century, but Steve liked that idea. He saw it as romantic. The notion that he could steal a soul with the press of a button played on all the gooey, sappy emotions that set the beat of his heart. 

The idea that he could claim something as beautiful as this man, lost in his moment of solitude and silence, all with a camera, was otherworldly. 

Steve wanted to steal it; the man’s soul. _Him_. Steve wanted to keep the stranger in his electric viewfinder forever. 

Prying his eyes away from the mystery man, Steve checked the photo on the LED display and screwed up his nose. It was good – any picture of a sinfully attractive person was good – but it didn’t do the dark stranger justice. There was something wrong with the way the light caught his face. There was more darkness there, something alien and different around the man’s eyes. Added shadow. A smudge of black like oil over blue water. 

Steve adjusted his settings back and forth, proofing the shot while zooming in and out. More light, less contrast, a little more aperture point. Then he softened the focus until the lights danced bokeh behind the man’s head, pulling and morphing and transforming from glow to softened octagons. 

_Click. Click. Click. Click._

It was eyeliner, Steve finally decided. Not like a woman, though, not like the sleek point that Steve’s Milk Bar date had worn. No, this was darker and harsher, smudged and rubbed on. Violent. Evil. 

Not make-up. 

Grease black warpaint. 

_Click._

Stage makeup. The man was a performer here, and Steve found himself narrowing the focus of his lens in on a graceful body. The man had such effortless elegance. One leg folded up to rest against the tree. Steve saw those black jeans and chunky boots and moved closer, the power of his lens not getting him close enough. 

_Click. Click._

A heavy belt around the man’s waist.

_Click._

Something that glimmered and threw light on the outsides of his thighs. A silver shine instead of leather on his left arm. 

_Click._

And then the brush of a hand through hair, the wavy strands moving like water through fingers, and Steve was once again hastily changing the settings of his Mirrorless to try and capture that moment. 

_Click._

Steve edged closer.

_Click. Click. Click. Click. Click._

And then the world ended, and Steve almost dropped his camera. 

The man looked at him. Right _fucking_ at him. 

Steve met his eyes through the viewfinder and felt his blood run cold. His heart stopped, his breath hitched and then crazy as it was, Steve could have sworn that he saw a watercolour flash out around the man. A vivid sapphire blue and garnet red and freezing silver; colours that didn’t match but that melded so create an emblem of life. 

The stranger flipped him off while stubbing his cigarette out with the heel of his shoe — a snarl formed on his lips. 

Steve pressed the shutter before he even registered being caught.

_Click. Click. Click._

“Fuck,” Steve mouthed to himself. He was too afraid to lower his camera and yet too scared to look through the viewfinder. The flimsy metal was a sort of safety blanket; people could do anything when they were behind a camera. Artistic license. Creative insanity. 

Steve didn’t think that exception applied to moments like this. Moments where he’d been caught red-handed and in the act of stealing someone so that they could haunt his art and memories. 

Steve should go over. Should say something. Introduce himself. Tell the man he was beautiful. _Perfect_. Ask him to pose. To be Steve’s muse, for now, and until the end of time. 

He should apologise! Say he was sorry and ask for permission to keep the photos. To take more and make endless art of the man. To surround himself with the colours of the man’s aura and to be haunted by those grease slicked eyes. 

Steve should at least do something. Wave like a moron, even. Not just stand there like a dumbstruck fool. 

“I’m sorry,” he voiced to the night, “you’re just so beautiful.” 

But the man was already long gone, and not even Steve’s camera had caught his departure. 

* * *

_Flame thrower, at the show_  
_Make my heart melt in the middle of the room_  
_No I can't stay away_  
_Now I'm begging you to stay, oh_

* * *

The third time Steve saw him was no accident. 

Neither was the fourth, nor the fifth. 

There was a turning point in every situation in life. That tip on the scale of accidental and deliberate, where something innocent could be warped and twisted into something premeditated and intentional. 

Steve had passed that point on Thursday night and hadn’t bothered to look back. 

There was no way that he would have been the only person to go back to the carnival during its month stint. The artisan food stalls and the sway of cocktails in the park would have kept the hipsters satisfied and coming back for more every week. 

He could even concede that some photographers might go back multiple times. Those with buyers and contracts and art shows, or blogs and wanderlust Instagram accounts that needed that _perfect_ shot could be coaxed into buying ticket after ticket. 

Not many, Steve guessed, would go back just for a glimpse of eyes, or through the desire to stake out the performer’s trailers waiting for a flash of perfection in the darkness. 

In Steve’s defence, he hadn’t been in his right mind since Thursday. 

He’d gone home inspired, and as the late hours of Wednesday ticked into early Thursday, Steve was pencil smudged and hyped up on caffeine. Sleep didn't have time for sleep! Not when he had photos to study and eyes to sketch. 

When he’d loaded the photos of the mystery man on to his computer and zoomed in close, he’d seen the most fantastic shade of blue in his eyes. Grey. Blue. Cold and icy and steely and yet dark and deep and hinting at danger. 

Steve had never seen a colour like it, and he’d obsessively worked his way through a magnitude of attempts to blend the right pencils even to come close. 

Hours later, Steve’s apartment was terrifying.

Half-finished sketches of dark-lined eyes and watercolours of slate grey and soot-black and bright, clear cerulean blue littered the space, leaning against easel and laying, imperfect and thus unfinished, trodden underfoot on the floor. Daylight had given him a second opinion, and he’d twisted in flecks of green to tone everything down and to blend the endless sky and shimmering silver together. 

Still, nothing seemed right, and Steve’s colours fell short of the memory sealed in his mind's eye. 

And so Steve had come back. Not just tonight, but the night before and the night before that. The night before that he’d turned Sam down for dinner at the Empire under the claim of business. 

It took two tries to find the man. To follow the whispers and the gossip and the incoherent babbling of smitten carnival-goers to work out where Steve’s mystery man of smoke of darkness worked. 

_Ethereal eyes_ , they said, and _beautiful_. And, _he_ _shines like his blades_. _Cheekbones like a razor's edge._

Steve found him by following the crowd, and Steve was struck silent the moment he saw him again.

Steve’s mystery man was the attraction of the Big Top after dark. The highlight. The final act. Eyes alive with danger and mischief and deadly promise. When the tame lions had all gone to bed, and the clowns no longer had an audience; that was when he came out, deadly and graceful like the cats before him, and painted in a gothic parody of the tricycle balancing comedians that entertained the children. 

The Winter Soldier, they called him. An unholy ghost they’d picked up in the heart of the freezing wastelands of Siberia. More animal than man and more god than animal. An assassin done with taking lives; a marksman with nothing else than the drive to kill his target of wood and paint. 

His costume drew Steve’s eyes to all the right – maybe wrong – places and Steve had had to breathe in deep that first night he’d found him. 

Now the leather was well known, traced over with an artist’s eyes a hundred times. Steve had memorised it all; each buckle, each strap. The way it looked like body armour, and a sexual fantasy all rolled into one, or the way it clung to the stranger’s torso like sleek oil that flowed out over hips and into comfortable combat pants — fitted to perfection. 

The Solider wore his hair down, straggly and free around his shoulders. It curled in a way that made Steve want to sketch it in charcoal and shade waves of light and dark and fine lines. Unlike when Steve had seen him in the Milk Bar, or quiet spaces between trailers, The Winter Soldier chose to wear a mask in the ring. But not like some gaudy superhero or highwayman robber. This thing was hard, shaped plastic, matte black like the paint streaked across the rest of his features. It covered from throat to nose, ear to ear, and meant that the performer never spoke. 

Somehow that only added to the appeal.

His left arm was a blade of silver. Material and steel blending into one shine of movement. Steve had watched him enough now – counted along with the crowd enough – to know that The Winter Soldier had an arm full of blades. A brace and scabbard strapped over his leathers and lined with knives no longer than The Soldiers fingers. Twelve blades, all slender and sharp and a perfect fingers width apart. 

Steve had seen him in action countless times now. Seen the man move his right hand over his left arm and let loose a flurry of throwing knives with the flick of a wrist. They’d flown like doves, light and shining in the gloom of the Big Top, and each one had hit its target; clumps of steel vibrating in the red of the bullseye. 

Steve had been entranced with the play of light and the way the performs paint-covered eyes had narrowed ever so slightly. It was hypnotic. The man commanded the crowd. They were there for him and _only_ him, and he _knew_ it. He made _them_ acknowledge it. 

He walked the ring like a god, his dark hair and dark clothes and dark eyes rimmed in fucking _dark_ made him a god of the dangerous and sinful. Of the unknown but desired and, crude as it was, Steve knew there wasn’t a dry seat in the house. 

The Winter Soldier worked them all like a Rockstar, his theme song a dirty, grungy grind of electric guitar and deep drums and erotic harmonisation. He strut like he owned the world, and when he raised his arms, the crowd cheered. 

When he dropped them, enrapt silence followed. 

Tonight, the same as last night, and the night before and the night when Steve had found him, the man finished his show by drawing a brave audience member from the crowd. He didn’t do it with words and promises of greatness. He simply held his knife – his favourite, Steve supplied – above his head and lifted his other arm, commanding response. 

The knife in question was a seven-inch blade of silver steel that, Steve knew, could cut through cloth and board alike. 

It would have no problem going straight thought skin and lodging in bone. 

Last night, the object of Steve’s scrutiny had picked a waif of a girl from the audience. Red curls and blood-red jacket, and with an accent that marked her as different, she had stood at the target board unflinchingly as the knife thrower peppered her with his skills. 

The night before it had been a man with an easy grin and the ability to work the crowd. Clint, he’d called himself, and he’d made a show of inspecting The Winter Soldiers knives, claiming that they were magnetic and rigged. He’d been proven wrong when he’d been allowed to throw not one, but three, blades at the board. Each one failed to stick into the well-worn wood, clattering miserably to the floor and marking his lack of skill with a laugh from the crowd. 

The night before that, it had been a silver-haired punk. German, maybe. Or something Slavic. Steve couldn’t pick the accent in the broken English, but The Winter Soldier had nodded along when the young man spoke. 

Not a drop of blood had been spilt even as the boy shivered with each throw. 

Each night The Winter Solider asked for a victim, and each night Steve put his hand up. 

Once, the Soldier had looked at him, his cold blue eyes masked in darkness bore into Steve’s soul, all while his hand pointed at someone else. 

Enamoured as he was, it wasn’t until the fourth night – Sunday – that Steve suspected foul play as the victim was chosen. 

This woman also had red hair, more like crimson than deep red of the previous night’s victim. Shorter than the last, and with a nose pinched like a pixie, she introduced herself as Natasha with a voice deprived of any accent. 

Steve would have thought nothing of it if it weren’t for her nose. Turned up like a pixie, he thought. His mind supplied the rest. The Milk Bar; his vapid date, the first glance of the man and the woman he'd left with. How she’d appealed to Steve in all the right ways. 

She’d looked like she could take on the world and win, all without breaking a sweat and while doing in in stupid shoes. 

It made sense that the participants were plants. The guy was good – fucking incredible, actually – but a flinching audience member could stand between an awe-inspiring show and a manslaughter scene. It just took one missed mark, and the whole thing would go down in flames. 

Still, Steve held his breath like anyone else as the knifeman held the blade to the front of his muzzle. A hidden kiss and maybe a muttered word, and then a flick of the wrist had the knife hitting the wood above the woman’s right shoulder. 

Steve had seen the show a few times now. He’d been lost in the movement of glistening steel and deft fingers and gasps of the crowd. Planted participant or not, there was no denying that the knifeman had talent. Knife after knife followed, the blades being pulled from places that seemingly didn’t have knives before. Somewhere silver and cold, other black and matte and the last one – always the final one – was red as blood. It sunk into the wood at the very top of the woman’s head, barely a hairbreadth short of cutting skin. 

Like always, the crowd roared into cheers as The Winter Soldier helped his volunteer out of the close-cut outline of knives. Pixie-nose – Natasha – took a shaky bow before returning to her seat, the music started up again, and somehow the Soldier always managed to disappear before the lights came on. 

Every time The Winter Soldier disappeared, Steve swore a part of him did as well. 

* * *

_Say my name_  
_And every colour illuminates_  
_We are shining_  
_And we'll never be afraid again_

* * *

The next time Steve saw him, the world as he knew it ended. 

Just like everyone, Steve had many faults. He was stubborn and a little arrogant, especially when he thought he was right. He didn’t always see things clearly from other perspectives, but he’d give someone the shirt off his back if they needed it. That, too, was a fault. He was dangerously self-sacrificing, and consistently too humble to aggressively chase things he wanted. He let business opportunities pass him by, lost contracts and collectors to artists more persistent with their sales technique, and he clicked through more dating applications than he’d ever actually meet. 

So why Steve ended up hiding in a foul-smelling public toilet while security did their closing rounds was clearly a mixture of all his shortcomings. 

He had the perfect excuse in mind, even in hand, if he got caught. He was a photographer who’d lost track of time. Creative crazy, and honestly, he meant to harm! 

  
That was the play he’d use. And if he was seen peering through his lens at the staff RVs, then he could babble all day about the way the lights played off the metal window rims, and how he was trying to accurately depict the life of the wandering performer who wowed crowds wherever they went. 

Steve’s plan was to keep talking until security got sick of him and wrote him off as some crazy hippy. 

It wasn’t foolproof, but it was the best he had, even after half an hour in the crummy brick toilet and the ten minutes he’d argued with himself before slipping into his hiding place. 

The carnival was only in town for another three nights, and Steve was quickly running out of reference material for his sketches. Word had spread about the place, and the public had been coming out in droves to catch the last few days and nights of unique entertainment. While not all of them stayed for the late knife show, it was becoming harder and harder to get a good seat, and Steve was painfully aware that he hadn’t seen those unnameable eyes properly in days. 

Steve was desperate. 

So he waited in the darkness, letting the last sounds of life die away, and the fairground lights turn off with an audible release of electricity. Five minutes after that, he clocked out another five and then scampered out of his hiding spot like he wasn’t a six-foot-something grown man. 

He didn’t bother going anywhere else, even if a few random photos would be suitable for his cover. Really, he just needed to make sure he didn’t get caught, and he was too focused on the idea of eyes and hair and dancing shadows over cheekbones to focus on anything else. 

Somewhere between the toilet and the ring of RV’s, Steve had concluded that he was mad. That this was a terrible idea and at best, he was going to get a knife through the chest and at worst, he’d end up with one in the eye. 

Logically, he’d probably be arrested and need Sam to bail him out, which, when Steve thought about it, sounded worse than getting a knife through both eyes. 

He had been lost in thoughts of bail and never-ending ridicule when everything had gone to hell.

Steve was quiet, his feet going down toe to heel as he crept closer like a hunter as he approached the camp. Or a wildlife photographer trying to sneak up on their prey. He could hear voices. Talking. A foreign language that he’d decided to be Russian. 

The light was terrible – he should have bought his tripod. Not that that bulky thing would have helped him sneak at all, but at least he would have had a better chance at getting useable shots. 

Steve was so focused on equipment and cover stories and being stabbed in the eye that he hadn’t heard her coming. Not a single step or inhale of breath. One moment Steve had been struggling to get his eyes to adjust while covering the brightness of his LCD screen, and the next she was standing _right there_. 

Steve jumped out of his skin and almost dropped his camera. 

She seemed to like that and smiled wickedly before moving in closer. Pixie-nose got right in his face, and stunned as he was, Steve found it impossible to move backwards. Sprung. Personal space clearly wasn’t a thing of her, though Steve couldn’t blame her. He was the outsider here. He was the one tramping around a closed camp at night, camera in hand and heart on his sleeve. 

And then she started yelling at him. Steve had thought she’d have a shrill, piercing voice, but that wasn’t the case. It was deep and guttural, the words hissed out in a language jilted and unknown but punctuated with an unmissable jab of the index finger. 

“Please stop. I just want…” Steve pleaded, honestly not even sure what he wanted. 

She only got louder the more he tried to calm her, snarling and hissing and damnit, kicking at Steve’s knee with the sort of force that could splinter bones. Steve only just managed to swivel out of the way, his mind vaguely considering that she had the potential to do a lot more damage if he wasn’t careful. 

“She says you’re a fuckin’ creeper.” A voice said out of the dark. 

Steve felt himself wavier out of existence, his body both shutting down with reality and bustling alive with possibility. Both. All at once, while his heart simultaneously sunk in his stomach and flew so high that the world was just a speck at the boot of personal possibility. 

Honestly, Steve didn’t know what happened first or next or in any of the minutes after. 

He knew he swore out loud. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said back, but if that came before or after he’d lifted his sleeve and flashed it toward the man clad in darkness, he’d never be able to remember. 

What he did see – what he would always remember – was the look on the other man’s face. That wide-eyed, open-mouthed stare of someone so utterly bewildered and so lost in a moment that they were falling. Steve just wanted to paint it; wanted to catch him first, and then record that memory to canvas and keep it for the rest of eternity. 

Leather creaked as a heavy jacket fell to the floor. A sleeve was pushed up, and Steve felt everything in his life came tumbling into place. 

The words on The Winter Soldier’s arm were so _Steve_. 

_You’ve got to be fucking kidding me_ , had never looked so good. So beautiful. Steve liked cursive fonts and scribbled memo’s, elegant letters and a kaleidoscope of colours matched with an afterthought of intention and need. 

Those words stood out against the man’s skin. Bloomed there; flourished in waves of watercolour and curled embellishments. They clashed with his persona and spent their colourful time wrapped under silver knife hostelers and short but deadly blades. 

At that moment, Steve knew that this man would be just like the words on his arm. Prickly and hesitant, unsure of himself and defined by a heavy accent. Russian, Steve had learnt, and that made the font on his skin seem acceptable. He’d probably be stubborn and hot-tempered, but passionate and brave and dependable. Capable of horrible things but tempered and tamed and in need of safety and love. 

Steve knew nothing at all about the man, but Steve knew that he already wanted to give him anything. Everything. Watching the stranger smile even as the pixie-nosed woman coughed out a ‘holy fucking shit. CLINT!’ in perfect English, Steve felt the world open up wide, and then close around his mysterious stranger, enveloping them both together. 

And yeah, maybe the stories were right. Perhaps the air did taste better, or maybe that was the lingering flavour of vodka on his Soulmate’s lips.

* * *

The next time Steve saw him – saw _Bucky_ – was when Bucky was washed in morning sunlight, looking sleep-lazy and coffee deprived in Steve’s bed.

He’d taken well to the stalkerish exhibition in Steve’s apartment, merely laughing it off and calling Steve a fuckin’ creep in a way was spoken with nothing but affection. Bucky understood; they were Soulmates after all. 

It made Steve’s heart burst with warmth and a sense of pride that he’d never before felt. 

Steve loved that. Loved it so much that he ignored the fact that Bucky had rid Steve’s bedroom of all sketches of dark eyes and wild hair while Steve had been in the shower. Soulmate or not, Bucky had said, he didn’t want to be getting busy in front of a sea of his own judging eyes. 

The next time Steve saw Bucky was easily the first time he’d really seen _him_. There, looking dishevelled in his bed, Bucky smiled, his eyes flitting from Steve to the coffee mug in his hand, and then back to Steve. 

Even if the coffee hadn’t been for Bucky originally, Steve knew he would never be able to deny him. 

They had a lot to work out. Everything was so new, so strange and unexpected and confusing, but as Steve sat on the bed and handed the paint smudged mug over, he knew that they’d be alright. 

**Author's Note:**

> Of course, they went on to talk and rationalise and understand each other like fucking adults. Steve is incredible, as is Bucky, but Bucky has a limited skill set (and probably for now has his visa tied in with his performance) and Steve would never want Bucky to change. And so Steve would go with them. With the carnival. He paints, as always, and takes photos of the performers for newspaper and blog promotion. He has a stall where he does caricatures for the carnival-goers and sketches kids as their favourite superheroes. 
> 
> He still sells his work to collectors, and if his exhibits heavily feature a deadly looking man with warpaint, no one questions why. 
> 
> And on special occasions, when the moon is just right and the bond strong enough that Bucky doesn’t freak out, Steve is his audience plant and stands in front of Bucky’s knives and they wow the crowd together. 
> 
> It would be a highly effective show if they didn’t end up sucking so much face that Nat always has to clear the damn place out before someone succeeded in making a ‘home circus’ porn with the knifeman being pinned against his own board. 
> 
> \------
> 
> Soulmate fics always have that ‘awkward first encounter + words said = The One!’ thing, and I love that. It’s so cute. But I also wanted more. Wanted to play with the idea of natural attraction and noticing each other in ways that meant more and came long before words. 
> 
> Let me know if there is any interest in a companion fic, maybe along the lines of my authors note. 😊


End file.
